“It wouldn’t be surprising to see ‘The Traitor’ filed in the Dad-canon of crime cinema alongside other European films like ‘Mesrine’ or ‘The Baader Meinhof Complex’ — films where the context is too wide to sufficiently cover…”

| Feb 10, 2024

...movies like The Traitor are worth tracking down for their fearless adherence to the ideals of morality. This is a deluxe mob movie, done with the kind of wit, intelligence, and scrupulous spirit that make it a must see...

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 30, 2023

Marco Bellocchio’s The Traitor is his latest slice of unconformist Italian cinema whose mafia tale is a brutal knockout. It has such a rare script that goes against everything we know about conventional mob-genre film rules. It’s a cinematic miracle.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 27, 2022

The film is dynamically suspended between the pathos of rise and fall and the monotony of daily life, though punctually subdued and understated; it flows like a Homeric poem.

| Jul 13, 2021

These thoughts, if ruminated on too deeply, can be as chilling the deeds of individuals in the film...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 18, 2021

This telling of the story of Tommaso, ... the first high-ranking figure in the Cosa Nostra to inform on the crime organization, rings utterly true as far as it goes.

| Feb 13, 2021

As Buscetta, Favino is a terrific presence, charismatic as past Italian tough guys such as Lino Ventura.

| Jan 9, 2021

Favino, a familiar face internationally as a lumpen heavy, gives a galvanising career-best performance...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 22, 2020

Parts of The Traitor take place in the United States. It's always great to see European films with American-set scenes that weren't shot here.

| Sep 16, 2020

The Traitor has all the trappings of an indecently immoral entertainment. Yet it has turned out be oddly flattened.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 14, 2020

An authentic and very thrilling film about the mafia's world. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 7/10 | Aug 1, 2020

A complex character study emerges, one that is inherently unflattering (Buscetta is a ruthless killer), in a restlessly intelligent film.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 24, 2020

A brooding, two-inch-thick porterhouse steak of a movie.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 23, 2020

The moral ambiguities and questions of legacy, friendship, family and integrity in Marco Bellochio's The Traitor are the strongest points of an ambitious, punishing addition to a long line of films to explore the inner workings of the Cosa Nostra.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 23, 2020

Carried by Pierfrancesco Favino's layered central performance.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 22, 2020

Most memorably, it captures what it must be like to live your life looking over your shoulder and, given the brazen nature of the men's appalling crimes, the absolute inevitability of their demise.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 20, 2020

Italian mob biopic is courtroom drama with bloody violence.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 1, 2020

Resists the call of "Godfather" films' commercialism by providing a truer picture of how the Italian mafia really conducts business.

| Original Score: B+ | May 15, 2020

Both The Irishman and The Traitor explore how hollow the back half of a criminal life can be.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 2, 2020

A legitimately Italian Mafia movie with memoirs, might, mayhem and a running time at least an hour shorter than 'The Irishman.'

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 14, 2020